Free The Removers by Donald Hamilton

me again that she was no teen-age kid, particularly not my teen-age kid, and that her alcoholic intake was none of my business. They’re always so damn sensitive about their new-found adult independence, at that age. I kept my mouth shut and made each of my drinks last out two of hers, so that at least one of us would be able to find the way home when the time came. It was a long time in coming.
    “Matt,” she said abruptly, well on towards morning.
    “Yes, kid?”
    “Over by the pillar there. The man in the dark suit. I thought we might run across him, if we stuck it out long enough.”
    I didn’t move at once. Then I picked up her white purse, took a cigarette from it, and a silver lighter with the initials M.F., for Moira Fredericks. I lighted a cigarette, took it from between my lips, and placed it between hers.
    “Thanks, baby,” she said. “Do you see him?”
    I had him spotted, in the mirror inside the flap of the purse. “I see him,” I said.
    “That’s the one.”
    She didn’t have to tell me. I was looking at Martell. As usual, the picture and description I’d seen hadn’t added up to anything much like the actual man. He had thick, black, glossy hair brushed straight back from his broad forehead, and a long mouth with thick, meaty, sexy lips—I remembered his weakness for women, that had cost him two official reprimands.
    As Moira had said, he was wearing a dark suit, one of the few dark suits in the room. He had dark glasses on. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. He could have been wearing a mask and I would have known him. You learn to have a feeling for the people in your own line of business.
    If you were working for a criminal organization Mac had said, you’d be called enforcers... removers is a very good word. Martell was playing both roles now, proving, I guess, that there isn’t much difference in actual practice.
    He was packing a shoulder gun, I noted, to go with his cover as Fredericks’ bodyguard. Judging by his dossier, he’d be fast with it, as fast as you can be with a rig like that. Not that it mattered. We don’t go in much for face-to-face showdowns. When the time came that he needed a gun on my account, he’d either have all the time in the world to get it out, or no time at all.
    “A real attractive specimen,” I said, closing the purse. It took a little effort to do that, and to leave my back to him. I found myself wishing I hadn’t left the .38 back at the motel. There’s only one answer to a good pistol-man, and that’s another pistol. It’s something they don’t do so well across the water, where they tend to think of a handgun as just a portable rifle—sometimes they even equip them with folding stocks, for God’s sake! They haven’t got the fine old pistol traditions that we have. But Martell had been playing gangster long enough to be thoroughly acclimatized, I was sure. “How long’s he been working for your dad?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Not very long, I think, but he was here when I got back from. Don’t pump me, Matt. I only pointed him out to you because. well, because there’s something about him that frightens hell out of me.”
    “I know,” I said. “He reminds you of me. That would frighten hell out of anybody.”
    She looked up from the table and made a face at me. “Get me a drink, will you, baby?”
    I hesitated. Her voice was steady enough, but she’d had a lot and her eyes showed it. Her hairdo, as always when it was subjected to stress, had come slightly unraveled— but only enough to look kind of cute and windblown, and in other respects she was still quite presentable. But I didn’t know what another would do to her, and I didn’t really want to find out. You never feel quite the same about someone you’ve had to mop up after.
    Well, she wasn’t my child, she wasn’t my wife, and it was hard to say if I could even call her my girl. I went and got her the drink, noting that Martell had